The groundbreaking guide to trans history in America, revised and updated for a new political era.

Transgender History is the modern classic on transgender life in America since the nineteenth century, encompassing the major movements, writings, and events that shape today’s gender revolution.

Susan Stryker’s sweeping, intersectional account charts more than a century of history, showing how rising acceptance in the 1960s and 2010s was met with waves of bigotry and intolerance that began in the ’70s and continue today.

Through her explanation of central concepts and terms, informative sidebars, and brief biographies of trans pioneers, Stryker reminds readers of one crucial truth: Transgender people have always been here. In good times and bad, they’ve built supportive and expansive communities, battled for freedom, and transformed American culture and society in the process.

Now completely revised and updated, including a longer, global history and a timely chronicle of the latest wave of anti-trans backlash, Transgender History remains both a vital resource and a powerful testament to the enduring legacy of trans lives.

Susan Stryker is a two-time Lambada Literary award nominee, and two-time winner, most recently for When Monsters Speak: A Susan Stryker Reader (Duke University Press, 2024). She is an Emmy-Award-winning documentary filmmaker for Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria (TVS 2005), and founding co-editor of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly. Her most recently publication is Transgender History: A Resource for Today’s Struggle—and Tomorrow’s (Seal Press, 2026).

Zach Ozma is an interdisciplinary artist and writer. He is the author of Etiquette In The Arts (Spiral Editions), BLACK DOG DRINKING FROM AN OUTDOOR POOL (Sibling Rivalry Press), and with Ellis Martin co-edited WE BOTH LAUGHED IN PLEASURE: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan (a 2020 Lambda Literary Award winner. Nightboat Books). He has exhibited at ArtYard, Zach’s Crab Shack, Root Division, 1122 Gallery, and CTRL+SHFT, and other locations. Raised by folk musicians in Seattle and the Santa Cruz mountains, he came of age as an artist in Oakland at California College of the Arts and in the East Bay experimental poetry scene. Ozma holds a BFA from CCA in Community Arts and lives in the Philadelphia area.